Stuck in a Rut?

I’ve thought a lot over recent years about how to get my learners ‘unstuck’ when they just can’t seem to progress past a certain stage for whatever reason.

There’s a temptation, as a teacher, to mope and moan about the fact that we have seen a general decline in practice amongst our students over the years, but that’s not doing anyone any favours. More discussion on motivation in the practice to come soon, but in the meantime I’ve been thinking about the major stumbling blocks that my learners seem to hit in their learning journeys and what I can do to help smooth out their path to success.

A major one for young learners seems to arrive when they come to playing with two hands together. Many kids’ method books seem to be brilliant at introducing one note at a time in their notated pieces, but then leap forward at an accelerated rate when it gets to hands together playing just when the learner needs to spend more time embedding their coordination and reading skills.

I feel many books and perhaps teachers too, have a fear of moving too slowly. I certainly don’t because I have seen the benefits of reinforcing and embedding skills and the satisfaction that comes with simply learning more new pieces! If moving on quickly to the next technique or bit of knowledge is resulting in slow progress and frustration, then some extra repertoire that embeds what they have learnt so far is precisely what they need to get unstuck.

With this in mind I am composing material to help get learners back on track and my first “Get Unstuck” collection is for this early hands-together stage. I’ve kept all the pieces until the last two in a “Middle C position” as this seems to be the most common collection of notes we often teach learners to read first.

Teachers can feel free to reprint this many times for their own pupils, using the full collection or just certain suitable pieces here and there. Parents of young learners might want to use it at home with their pianist, or send it to lessons to suggest to their teacher. It can be useful first hands-together music for older beginners too, or good sight-reading practice if you’re a little further along. Read more about it and download it today on the show page!

More “Get Unstuck” collections are planned for publishing soon. The next will be for learners at a similar stage but who have learnt to read music with the left hand in a low C position. Then there will be further collections focussing on other stages such as playing in different but simple new keys, playing with accidentals, beginning to play with mobile hands and more. If you have an issue that you or your learner is stuck with please let me know. I’d love to create more music to help you Get Unstuck!

UPDATE: 4/9/25:

Get Unstuck 2 is now ready and available on the shop page also. This collection has the left hand with finger 5 on the low C whilst right hand has thumb on middle C again. Some pieces are similar to the Get Unstuck 1 collection, but adapted for learners who are using this “Low C position.”